


constellations

by boykingdom



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3558128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boykingdom/pseuds/boykingdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When I was a kid, before my mom died…” Dean confesses in a quiet murmur. “There were two things I was drawn to in particular. One of them was angels. The other was stars.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	constellations

“When I was a kid, before my mom died…” Dean confesses in a quiet murmur. “There were two things I was drawn to in particular. One of them was angels. The other was stars.”

The night is quiet and presses into them, but does so in no way that is suffocating. The metal of the Impala is cool under their hands where they sit on the flat hood, both looking toward the sky. Castiel directs his gaze to Dean.

“Angels and stars?” he asks, imploring.

Dean nods and shrugs with an air of causality, though he can’t quite meet Castiel’s eye. He doesn’t elaborate.

Castiel smiles a soft smile and adds the information to his already collected pile of things he keeps about Dean in the most intimate part of his mind.

Dean Winchester: the boy saved by an angel and sown together with stardust.

It’s all very fitting.

*

Castiel starts exploring more of Dean’s past, specifically the time before the death of Mary Winchester.

He stands in the corner of a three-year-old Dean’s room and watches Mary put him to bed. Having graduated from a crib, he leaps into the sheets with an excited giggle, his mother in tow. Her belly is swollen with her second child.

She laughs as he does, and it’s a beautiful sound.

“You’re going to have to settle down if you want to get any sleep,” she tells him. She grins as she sits down at the foot of Dean’s bed and pulls him into her lap.

“Let’s say our prayers, okay?” Mary says. Dean stops squirming and nods, clasping his little hands together and closing his eyes. Mary bows her head.

“Dear God,” he starts, his voice having not quite lost its childlike tendency of mispronouncing words. Castiel finds it endearing. “Thank you for today. Thank you for a yummy dinner with apple pie. Thank you for Mommy and Daddy and Sammy. Thank you for beds and stars and chocolate milk. Amen.”

Mary hugs Dean against her and releases him. He crawls under the covers and sits up enough to kiss his mom on the cheek. “Goodnight, Mommy,” he says. He then leans down and kisses her belly. “Goodnight, Sammy.”

Dean lies down and Mary sweeps his hair back before planting soft lips on his forehead. “Goodnight, Dean,” she says. “Angels are watching over you.”

She shuts the door quietly behind her as she leaves. Dean is left in the darkness, quickly being lulled into sleep.

“Thank you, angel,” he whispers into the night.

“It’s my pleasure,” Castiel whispers back, though he knows Dean can’t hear him.

*

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Dean?” Dean’s preschool teacher asks him. She’s a tender woman in her fifties, and when she speaks she kneels so that she is eye level with Dean. Castiel likes her immediately.

“An astronaut!” Dean replies with the enthusiasm reserved only for four-year-old boys. His smile is wide and bright.

“And why is that?

“To see the stars,” Dean says. Then he pauses for a second, deep in thought. “And meet the angels.”

The fire that kills Mary Winchester occurs two months later. Dean stops believing in angels and develops an intense fear of flying. Castiel’s heart breaks.

*

Sometimes, though, Castiel will still catch Dean staring at the stars.

He’ll stare at them through the window of the Impala as he drives at night, or when he awakens in the early hours of the morning and steps outside to clear his head. There is always something akin to longing written in his face.

Sometimes, Castiel will catch Dean staring at  _him_ like that.

His breathing hitches and his heart flutters a little more quickly in his chest when that happens.

*

“You still love the stars.”

Dean looks to Castiel. Castiel can see just how deep his soul goes, and just how impossibly bright it continues to shine even when in pain. Dean gives a self-deprecating laugh.

“Does it matter?”

*

It does matter.

In fact, it may be the most important thing in the universe.

*

Suddenly, stars are everywhere.

Stars are smattered across Dean’s skin; on his shoulders, the bridge of his noes and his cheekbones. The freckles form constellations and Castiel traces them over and over again in his mind.

Stars are inside Castiel. He can feel them flare up every time Dean touches him or looks at him in that way that, if only for a moment, has him thinking that he’s not the only one who feels them. They burn and ignite both his grace and his human body, and the sensation, while foreign, is not entirely unpleasant.

Stars also exist in all of the spaces between Dean and Castiel, no matter how long or short. They are charged with electricity and thrumming with tension, and they have a gravitational pull of their own, drawing the two beings closer to each other.

However, Castiel is not only feeling the stars, but is also seeing them. On days when the pull is too much, he will find himself alone in the hot shower with water leaving streaks down his skin, or on the bed of a motel room like the ones Dean and Sam stay in. He will touch himself until the only word he remembers of the millions of languages and billions of phrases he knows is the name “Dean”, touch himself until the stars burn too hot and he lets them consume him with a shout.

Yes, stars are everywhere. It’s the angels he’s starting to see less and less of.

*

Dean begins to notice the lack of angels, too. “It’s been awhile since you’ve been upstairs,” he remarks. “How come you don’t go there anymore?”

Castiel shrugs. “I don’t have as much for me there. I prefer to spend my time on Earth, with you.”

The tips of Dean’s ears turn scarlet and he averts his eyes. It’s Sam who turns from where he sits at the motel’s small table with his laptop and looks upon him with an all-knowing expression on his face.

And later that evening, it’s Sam who corners Dean while they’re alone and tells him in a steady voice, “The angel is in love with you.”

Dean doesn’t go to sleep that night. Castiel flies and tries to ignore the stars.

*

It’s Dean who makes the first move. It always is.

*

Sam is gone, the human and the angel are left alone in the motel room, and Castiel looks at Dean and falls in love all over again.

He is impossibly beautiful. Castiel cannot help but feel an ounce of pride for this fact, as he was the one who rebuilt Dean’s body. That is Castiel’s grace that lives inside Dean’s soul, and that is Castiel’s mark that burns into his shoulder. He is perfect and if ever there were a thing to rebel for, Dean Winchester would be it.

Dean looks at him and Castiel is overtaken by selfish thoughts. It is a sin of his kind to yearn for love from another, and yet Castiel wants.

He wants, and never shall he express this.

So he is surprised when it is Dean who speaks first, who breaks the tension. “Do you remember,” he says, “what I told you? About stars and angels?”

Castiel nods, solemn, for the words that come from Dean Winchester’s mouth are more sacred than any Bible verse.

"That’s still true," Dean murmurs, flush spreading across this cheeks. He averts his eyes from Castiel and it is felt as a great loss. "I never stopped loving the stars. They’re endless; the way all good things should be, I guess. I used to take Sammy out to look at ‘em before our mom died. After that I stopped believing that good things could last. But I never stopped looking for little lights in the darkness, ya know? Maybe the sun ain’t gonna come out tomorrow, but that stars sure as hell will."

Dean looks back to Castiel. His face is guarded, but his soul stirs with a mix of anxiety and hope.

"And then you came, and Cas, you were a fucking supernova.

"And believe me, I know how insanely stupid and corny that sounds." It didn’t. "But that’s the only way I can put it. I’d stopped believing in angels all together. Called it a childhood phase and was done. Then you show up in a barn in Pontiac and tell me I deserve to be saved, and all I can fucking think about is what my mom used to say to me. That angels were watching over me.

"I know that other angels don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to me or how I’m doing. But then there’s you, who listens to me rant about insignificant things that don’t even matter because we’re all gonna die anyway. That’s just the thing, Cas. You and the stars are both here to shine light into dark places. And we all know it doesn’t get much darker than whatever twisted life I’m pretending to live.

"So, maybe I don’t love the angels anymore. But I do love one of them."

Dean swallows, takes a deep breath. Castiel’s vision is blurring and he doesn’t know why until he abruptly realizes that he is crying human tears. His heart feels stuck in his throat when Dean leans toward him and says very, very slowly:

"I do love one of them."

*

It’s Castiel who makes the second move.

He clambers out of his seat and toward his human, and because he appears unable to use words at this time, presses his mouth to Dean’s like he has so wanted to for so long.

It is then that he understands the meaning of the word “magic”, understands why humans found themselves relying on the invisible force when they had nothing else. Dean’s mouth is hot and eager, and Castiel does not know what all of these urges mean but does know that he wants Dean to show him.

As a creature of God it is a ridiculous notion to believe that the entire universe would dare slow down and revolve around the places where Castiel and Dean are connected, but Castiel cannot help himself. He kisses Dean and everything is amplified to an extreme. He can feel stars dying and hear his brothers and sisters sing songs of an angel who fell in love with a human.

It is overwhelming and it is such a human need, and without hesitance Castiel submits himself to it.

*

Later, cocooned in blankets and wrapped in the warmth of naked flesh against naked flesh, Castiel traces over the constellations of Dean’s skin with his fingers. He pillows his head on Dean’s shoulder and draws patterns into his bare chest, marveling at how such a being could be claimed as his not only in soul, but now in mind and body as well.

"Dean Winchester," he undertones. "There are three things that you must understand."

"Hm," Dean hums, sated and sleepy as he continues to card fingers through Castiel’s hair. "And what are they?"

"The first is that I love you more than someone has ever before loved another." Dean slowly blinks his eyes open and Castiel adjusts himself so that he is looking directly into the vast expansions of green, using a thumb to stroke his cheekbone. "The second is that you are made of stardust." Dean smiles softly at that and Castiel leans forward to kiss his lips, then his nose, then his forehead. "And the third is that angels are watching over you," he whispers into Dean’s hair.

*

And so Dean Winchester lies with Castiel: two boys who shifted the stars and demanded the songs of angels.

It’s all very fitting.

 


End file.
